Month: April 2016

Abortion. Transportation. Exploding trains and pipelines. Thursday brought a potpourri of hot-button issues to Minnesota legislative debate. Lawmakers often avoided dry money talk in spending hours debating tweaks to the current two-year, $42 billion budget. Instead, they fell back on tried and true controversies and attention-grabbing issues as they prepare for the final three weeks… Read More

Replacing the Iron Range’s long time economic development board with a panel wielding less power on Thursday passed its first Minnesota House test. But opposition arose on issues including whether information the new board creates would be public and if there really is a need for change. The measure passed on a split voice vote,… Read More

Republicans want to finish a southwest Minnesota water project, kill the state film board, fund a tractor safety program, get rid of two business economic development programs and help Mille Lacs Lake-area businesses suffering from walleye fishing restrictions. All of that is part of what the GOP says would come without raising overall state spending.… Read More

Ten percent of Litchfield School District students are so far away from high-speed Internet connections that they cannot to do all of their homework. Superintendent Daniel Frazier on Wednesday said students in his area are luckier than many in rural Minnesota. Students who live in areas with mobile telephone signals so weak that wireless hotspots… Read More

Minnesota lawmakers do more than legislate; they also sometimes ask people to investigate, and they want to see those reports. Such is the case in a couple of recent issues: a state worker who seemingly emailed opposition to a northern Minnesota oil pipeline and a Commerce Department official accused of improperly ordering destruction of documents.… Read More

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ABOUT

Don Davis

Davis has covered Minnesota politics and government for Forum Communications Company/Forum News Service since 2001. He is an Iowa native who was a reporter and editor at newspapers there, leaving the state to edit newspapers in Illinois, Oklahoma and Wyoming before becoming a full-time political reporter in North Dakota. Now, newspapers across Minnesota print his stories.